It wasn’t that long ago that the Stanley Cup was the object of desire for young women and girls, flocking to Target stores and wreaking havoc in middle schools. But trends have changed: The colorful Owala FreeSip bottle is now the must-have water bottle for Gen Z.
And there’s still drama.
Priced at $27.99 for the 24-ounce version, Owala bottles come in a variety of seemingly random hues with fun names like Poolside Punch, Sunny Daze, and Tangy Tango. For example, the tan bottle comes with an orange and green cap, while the bright pink bottle has a cap that’s a mix of tan, gray, and red.
Some customers don’t like these color combinations, so some are swapping out the lids on bottles in stores to make their own custom Owala.
Caroline Nguyen, a parent from Texas who makes TikTok videos about parenting and shopping, noticed a total chaos in the bottle and bottle cap color combinations in the bottle and bottle holder section of her local Target.
She told BI that so many lids had been swapped out that it was impossible to guess which was the right combination: For example, she found that the white bottle had five different lid options.
Business Insider visited a Target in Virginia and found several mismatched bottles in the Owara neighborhood, including three brown bottles with three different lids.
“We encourage customers to think of other Owara fans and not replace bottle caps at retail stores,” Owara spokesperson Holly Bennett told Business Insider.
Owala sells replacement lids on its website for $6.99, which customers can purchase to mix and match colors.
The Owala section of Target. Haley Peterson / Business Insider
The swapped-top problem isn’t a completely victimless crime. The Frankenstein-like water bottles have been a headache for some Target employees, according to two Target employees and dozens of Reddit and TikTok posts from people claiming to work for the retailer. In some cases, the mismatched Owala bottles are being collected and either thrown out, donated, or returned to Owala, according to the employees and posts.
An employee at a Target retail store in Texas told BI that they found four to five mismatched bottles during the first week of summer, but that the situation has worsened in recent weeks. The employees who spoke to BI asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak on behalf of Target. BI confirmed their employment status.
“When the new school year starts or a new color is released, our orders go up to two or three per day because we’re one of the busiest stores in the area,” the Texas employee said.
If this is the case at many Target stores, two or three mismatched Owalas a day could quickly add up.
“It may not sound like a big deal, but given the fact that it was a Frankenstein creation of two existing colors, we were told to break two bottles for every bottle we swapped out,” the Texas employee said, referring to his supervisor’s original instructions to track the mismatched inventory.
The instructions then changed: Employees said they were told to stop removing the mismatched bottles from their inventory and instead leave them available for people to purchase.
A Target employee in Massachusetts told BI that the mismatched bottles are also causing issues with online orders.
“The cups shown on the website are a specific color scheme that Owara designed and sent to them, so if the lids have been replaced we won’t be able to sell them the specific cups they requested,” the employee said.
Target did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Nguyen owns her own (fitting) Owala Freeship and is sympathetic to those who replace the lids: “I think people are just trying to get their favorite color combination without realizing what problems it can cause for the store,” she says.
College student Carly Christie said she replaced the brown bottles with brown and green caps, and posted a TikTok apologizing after seeing many other videos of it being a problem.
“I’m very happy with my Owala and use it daily, but now that I’ve learned that replacing the lids causes issues for Target employees and others, I will never do it again,” she told Business Insider.